China invites Taiwan to the table and talks peace.
[Kuomintang* Chairman] Wu in turn said the Chinese and Taiwanese should make sure that their people never take up arms against each other again, in comments that also touched on this month's devastating earthquake in China's southwest.
"We cannot guarantee there won't be any natural disasters any more on both sides of the strait, but through our mutual efforts, we can ensure there is no war," he said.
Is China opening up, or appeasing the west, or both?
* Taiwan's ruling party.
More »

Aging, illness, and death are inevitable. Many Buddhists deal with this truth by meditating and contemplating such concepts as emptiness, impermanence, and interconnectedness. Another way people often handle thoughts of these pillars of suffering? Delicious cookies. In a study published in New Scientist , participants with low self-esteem who were assigned to ponder their own deaths ate more cookies (thoughts of death had little impact on those with high self-esteem). Ruminations of mortality also inclined them to spend more money. "When you indulge in shopping or eating, it helps you forget yourself," notes Dirk "Captain Obvious" Smeesters of Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
More »

Burma has finally approved visas for aid workers waiting to get into the country. 2.5 million people are estimated to be in need of aid. The U.S. Navy is apparently still waiting, though the junta's being a little leery fo the U.S. military shouldn't surprise or offend anyone.
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the U.N.'s former special rapporteur with Burma, says that the cyclone has opened a "window of opportunity" for dialogue with the junta, though terrible obstacles still remain and he describes the junta as paranoid.
More »

Actress Sharon Stone, whose controversial comments on the China Quake being karmic payback for repression in Tibet (mentioned in a comment by tiny thinker on this post) has been dropped from ads in China by Dior at China's request. China's label for Stone: "public enemy of all mankind." Where's Michelle Malkin when you need her?
Speaking of strident overreactions, China has been crying terror about the Olympics for some time. The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof went to western China to check it out.
More »

An estimated 10,000 children died in the earthquake in Sichuan province in China, and aftershocks are still echoing through the region. In one school with 900 children near the epicenter, only 13 students emerged alive. Parents have become angry at the shoddy construction used in China's school and in the government's reaction in general. And now rivers that have been dammed by debris from the quake and turned into growing lakes threaten many more people.
The Burmese government and their media is softening their stance toward allowing aid donors into affected areas.
More »

Mae Sot is a bustling border town a 7- hour bus ride out of Bangkok. As Dharamsala is to the Tibetans in India, so likewise is Mae Sot the center, or even hotbed, of Burmese-in-exile in Thailand. Besides massive refugee camps, there are many migrant workers plus legal and illegal Burmese everywhere. There may be more Burmese than Thai here. It certainly feels that way. Many of the heads of the democracy movement are based in Mae Sot as well as ethnic rebel leaders. Today, the air is abuzz with thoughts and hopes that Aung Sang Suu Kyi could be released from house arrest.
More »

I came to Thailand to volunteer in the Cyclone Nargis relief work. In the few days that I have been in Bangkok, the numbers of Burmese at risk in the aftermath of the disaster has more than doubled. The day before yesterday, UN stats were at 1.2 million. Yesterday noon, 2.5 million at the high end and by dinnertime Johns Hopkins (The Center for Refugee and Disaster Response & The Center for Public Health and Human Rights) was reporting 3.2 million in jeopardy. At press briefings we are reminded that new information keeps coming out and to bear in mind that "the situation is fluid". How macabre and cruel. Yes, fluid is the defining word.
More »

The renewal of Aung San Suu Kyi's captivity has gotten worldwide attention.
Photos of the ongoing tragedy by James Whitlow Delano.
Two PDFs: a Burma Update featuring Ram Dass, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Joseph Goldstein, and a press release from Freedom Now.
More »

China deals with the repurcussions of the terrible earthquake. New-formed lakes threaten to flood some 150,000 people in Sichuan province.
And the kleptocratic junta in Burma allows aid to squeak in to the provinces.
More »

An op-ed by Daniel A. Bell in today's New York Times seeks to dispel myths about young students in China--and addresses the government's moral obligation to help those in need:
A few days later, I was due to lecture on John Rawls’s theory of justice. By then, the huge toll of the earthquake had become apparent and the national mood had turned grim. Before the class, four students came to my office, raising doubts about the relevance of the “abstract” theories I was teaching and urging me to use more concrete examples. So I tried hard to think of an example that the students could grapple with.
Finally I came up with a good one (or so I thought). According to Rawls, the state should give first consideration to the worst-off members of the community. But which “community” matters? Do the state’s obligations extend outside national boundaries?
More »

An article in Salon points out,
"For under 2 cents a day per household, Americans could get 300 gigawatts of wind by 2030. That would:
Reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by 25 percent in 2030.
Reduce natural gas use by 11 percent.
Reduce cumulative water consumption associated with electricity generation by 4 trillion gallons by 2030.
Support roughly 500,000 jobs in the U.S."
All we need is an administration that will let it happen.
More »

A new study reveals one reason why incense and spiritualism go together like zendos and zafus. Beyond the symbolic tradition of burning incense lies a biological benefit: it can help ease anxiety and depression. When scientists administered incensole acetate, a compound found in incense, to mice, the compound affected them in "brain areas known to be involved in emotions as well as in nerve circuits that are affected by current anxiety and depression drugs." Adds Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, "This study also provides a biological explanation for millennia-old spiritual practices that have persisted across time, distance, culture, language, and religion--burning incense really does make you feel warm and tingly all over!" Read all about it over in Science Daily.
More »

"Before September, there were over 30,000 monks in Rangoon alone. Now there are 6,000. Where are the monks? That is the question."
- Ashin Nayaka, visiting scholar at Columbia University and a founder of the Buddhist Missionary Society in Jackson Heights, in today's New York metro. The article recommends visiting http://www.burmesemonks.org/ for more information; unfortunately, the story is not available online.
More »

The junta in Burma has raised its estimated death toll to 78,000, with 56,000 missing. [CNN]
Harvard Professor (and former Obama aide) Samantha Power and Washington Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt talk about Burma and the moral and political complexities of intervention. [NPR]
In China, at least 5 million people are left homeless in the aftermath of the largest earthquake the country has seen in 58 years. The country continues to struggle to recover the injured and dead while grappling with aftershocks and landslides. [Times Online]
The 17th Karmapa, Ugyen Trinley Dorje, makes his first visit to the United States.
More »

From the New York Times:
CNN apologized to China after the government strongly complained about remarks made on April 9 by the CNN commentator Jack Cafferty. During a broadcast that came after riots in Tibet, Mr. Cafferty said China’s leaders were “basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.” China demanded an apology, and angry Chinese accused CNN of biased news coverage. An earlier apology was rejected. But recently China’s Foreign Ministry highlighted a second apology, saying it came in a letter sent by the CNN president, Jim Walton, to China’s ambassador to the United States.
More »